A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Brain Mole Monarch

Sapience can be a terrible curse.And few creatures experience that pain more
deeply than the brain mole monarch.The
diet of psychic energy that enhances their intelligence to near-human levels is
the very same diet that encourages the magical tumors that metastasize through
their bodies.Thus, hard on the heels of
the arrival of their self-awareness comes the knowledge that they are sick,
that their bodies are betraying them, and that they are mortal.Worse yet, a brain mole monarch suffers this
discovery alone, since the other unascended moles in its nest are just dumb
animals by comparison, little more than components for the hive mind.

And so, desperate to leave a mark on the world in the short
time they have, brain mole monarchs scheme, plot, plan, carve monuments, hunt
humanoid candidates for mind swapping, attempt risky experiments, push their
psychic-gestalt-linked kin to take ever-greater risks, and generally cause
havoc in their wake.

One more note: Last entry we covered the theory that, since
brain moles have six limbs, they might be from another planet(that all hexipedal and/or psychic creatures
come from space being a common trope in pulp fantasy).But there’s another tradition, especially
from sword & sorcery fantasy and 1e AD&D, that says that psychic
creatures tend to come from Deepearth/the Underdark (or whatever your preferred
name is for the subterranean realms).And brain mole monarchs fit well into that mold too.There’s another hook as well: One of the only
evil gnomish deities, Urdlen the Crawler Below, resembles a giant naked mole
rat, just as Pathfinder’s brain moles do.If you don’t mind mixing Pathfinder and Greyhawk/Realms lore, brain mole
monarchs might be Urdlen’s children, recipients of his mental gifts but cursed
by the dark energies that long ago curdled his soul…

A wave of strange
trances strikes the city of Nerislann.The victims seem to suddenly understand no Common, fear bright light,
and eagerly eat bugs and worms.Often
they are reported to have stolen books or other small objects.Sometimes their minds return—always with
tales of tunnels, and darkness, and the strange pressure of chittering minds
inside their own—but others remain trapped in an animalistic state.A brain mole monarch has been collecting
humanoid minds and depositing them in the pale bodies of her servitors.Soon she will have one trapped mind for every
planet that tracks across the night sky…

Tormented by tumors
that wrack her with pain and rendered her nearly blind, a particularly bright
brain mole monarch, Soilsworn Fenn, has turned to the same answer so many
death-fearing humanoids do: necromancy.Now she rules an army of tiny skeletons, zombies, and even an attic
whisperer or two (that latter drawn by the negative energy and the plethora of
rodent skulls to choose from).Hoping to
cause a wave of deaths whose energy she can harvest for a ritual, Soilsworn
Fenn has set her servants to work on destroying the dam that overlooks a nearby
town.

Adventurers exploring
a dungeon come across a strange chamber whose floor is almost entirely
taken up with a miniature city, and whose walls are lined with images telling a
saga of some sort.A brain mole monarch
(whose mind is supposedly represented in the structure and street layout of the
bizarre model city) seizes the opportunity to induct the adventurers into the
rites and articles of faith of her “priesthood,” so that the outside world may
know of her glory when the tumors take her.

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.